July 4th Woke to a beautiful day. Not a drop of rain in sight. Our hotel includes breakfast in the tariff. A mixture of western and Japanese food, all very tasty. We were not disappointed. The morning was spent exploring all the preserved building and homes in the old town. Plenty of temples to see as well. We then headed for the hills on foot. Climbing a few hundred metres above the city for some stunning views. The walk through the park was just as pretty, wi...

2rd July Today is a glorious day. Beautiful blue skies, and not a drop of rain in sight. Managed to dry out our shoes from the torrential downpour yesterday. Caught the slow train to Nara, about 100ks from Kyoto. Nara is a quiet town with a lot of history, and plenty of temples. The town also has about 1200 tame deer wandering the parks. The deer will bow their head to you if you feed them. Over time they have been conditioned to bow in order to receive food. P...

1st July The plan today was to see a lot of the Temples in Kyoto. Unfortunately for us it was raining, but his did not dampen our enthusiasm. Some of the temples are over 1000 years old, and the craftsmanship in building the temples was impressive. The rain did ease for a while, but when it rained it was like a waterfall. We had umbrellas, but they didn't do a lot. I think we walked about 10ks today. As we arrived back to the hotel, blue sky apeared, so Monday ...

28th June It was so nice to arrive at the Hotel. 11 hours in the plane and 5 hours in the bullet train. The bullet train is pretty fast. We clocked it at 290kph with the GPS. So smooth and quiet. Weather has been nice in Hiroshimura. Spent our first day seeing the Peace park where the first atomic bomb exploded. The museum had some interesting and sombering displays from the after effects of the bomb. The rest of the day was spent exploring the city on foot. Very...

We have booked ourselves into a penthouse one block from Waikiki beach. After checking in we wandered down the main street to see the night life etc. The next few days were spent driving around the island, and taking in the sights. Sunset Beach, Diamond Head, Pearl Harbour and so on. Wasn't that impressed with Honolulu, Surfers Paradise is a nicer place with better beaches. But we are here now, so we enjoyed our time. Honolulu is a very busy, noisy, congested p...